The Guild Hall of Orario was a sprawling edifice of marble and noise.
Unlike Babel's oppressive grandeur, this building thrived on chaos—a cacophony of clinking valis, haggling merchants, and the rhythmic thud of monster cores being dumped onto counters.
Adventurers of every race and level milled about, their armor dented, their faces smudged with dungeon grime. The air smelled of sweat, ale, and the metallic tang of freshly harvested magic stones.
Zamasu stepped through the arched entrance, his pristine white toga a stark contrast to the stained leather and chainmail around him.
Heads turned.
Whispers followed.
The guild hall's usual din dimmed by a fraction as eyes tracked his movement—a child-sized figure gliding through the crowd with the detached grace of a specter.
He approached the main counter, where a line of adventurers waited to exchange their hauls.
The receptionist—a young woman with chestnut hair pinned in a tight bun and a nameplate reading 'Lyna'—barely glanced up as he neared.
Her quill scratched furiously across a ledger, tallying a half-rotten minotaur horn some ragged warrior had slapped onto the counter.
"Next," she called, voice clipped with routine exhaustion.
Zamasu stood silent until the minotaur horn's owner shuffled aside. Then, without ceremony, he reached into the folds of his toga and began extracting monster cores.
One by one, they clattered onto the polished oak surface. Smaller ones first—kobold—then larger stones the size of chicken eggs, their iridescent glow casting fractured light across Lyna's ledger.
Her quill froze mid-stroke.
By the time Zamasu finished, the counter was a small mountain of cores. The largest—a fist-sized gem from the fifteenth-floor wolf beast—rolled to a stop at the edge, pulsing faintly with inner fire.
Lyna's gaze flickered from the cores to Zamasu's face, then back. Her throat bobbed. "...All of these from today?"
"Yes."
She leaned forward, lowering her voice. "And… which floors did you harvest these from?"
"The first through the fifteenth."
The admission cut through the background noise like a blade. Conversations died. Tankards halted mid-sip. Even the bard strumming a lute in the corner faltered, his chord discordant.
Lyna's knuckles whitened around her quill. "Fif—'fifteenth'?"
Zamasu tilted his head. "Is there a problem?"
A nervous laugh escaped her. "It's not a per se. For a solo adventurer? 'Yes.'" She hesitated, then added, "Especially for… someone like you."
"Someone like me?"
Her eyes darted across his visage, then quickly away—as if afraid to linger. "A… god."
The word rippled through the hall. Adventurers exchanged glances.
A few made subtle gestures of respect—touching fingertips to their chests, the way mortals honored deities in passing.
But none knelt.
None prostrated.
This was Orario, after all—a city where gods walked openly, but where reverence had long since dulled into weary familiarity.
Zamasu's expression remained impassive. "I am not a god."
Lyna's smile tightened. She'd heard this before. Gods loved their games—playing mortal, feigning ignorance, all while toying with the Guild's rules. "Of course, Lord…?"
"Zamasu."
"Lord Zamasu," she said, bowing her head slightly. "But you must understand—gods aren't permitted to enter the Dungeon. It's forbidden. The Dungeon… reacts 'poorly' to divine presence. Violently, even."
He studied her. "Explain."
She hesitated, then leaned closer, her voice dropping to a whisper.
"The Dungeon hates the gods. Their sealed Arcanum still carries a… 'scent', I suppose. When a god descends beyond the first few floors, the Dungeon lashes out. Traps manifest faster. Monsters swarm. Some say the very walls try to crush them." Her fingers trembled as she sorted the cores into sizes.
"And since their powers are sealed, they're as vulnerable as any mortal. More than one has been… 'returned to Heaven' that way."
Zamasu absorbed this. "Then it's fortunate I'm not a god."
Lyna's polite facade cracked. "With respect, Lord Zamasu, your denial is… unpersuasive." She gestured vaguely at his attire, his bearing.
"Even among deities, you stand out."
"This is my first time entering the Dungeon," he said, ignoring her skepticism. "The creatures were weak. I saw no reason to stop."
A strangled noise came from the warrior behind him—a hulking dwarven man with a dented breastplate.
"'Weak?' You call a floor fifteen Razorfang 'weak'? That thing's hide can turn steel!"
Zamasu glanced at him. "It died in one strike."
The dwarf's face purpled. "Listen here, you little—"
"Enough," Lyna cut in sharply. Her eyes never left Zamasu. "Regardless of… 'circumstances', the Guild honors its exchanges."
She began counting the cores with practiced speed, her fingers flicking them into separate trays. "Total comes to 1,820,000 valis. Would you like a portion converted to jewel notes for ease of carrying?"
"No."
She blinked. "No?"
"I prefer tangible currency."
Lyna opened her mouth, closed it, then nodded. "As you wish."
As she ducked below the counter to retrieve the valis, murmurs swelled around them.
"Did you hear that? 'Fifteen floors.'"
"He's gotta be a war god. Maybe Takemikazuchi?"
"Nah, Takemikazuchi's got that scar. This one's too… 'clean.'"
Zamasu ignored them. His mind had already shifted to the next task: securing lodging.
The thought of sleeping in the open—vulnerable to the city's prying eyes—was unacceptable. An inn would suffice, temporarily.
Lyna reappeared with a bulging leather pouch and began stacking coins on the counter.
The valis clinked as they formed a precarious tower. "One-point-eight million," she said, pushing the stack toward him. "Guild policy deducts a two percent service fee for cash transactions."
He swept the coins into the pouch without counting them. "Understood."
As he turned to leave, Lyna called out, "Lord Zamasu—!"
He paused.
"If you 'are'… what you claim not to be," she said carefully, "please reconsider entering the Dungeon again. For your safety. And… 'ours.'"
The unspoken truth hung between them: a god's presence in the Dungeon could provoke divine retribution. Wars between familias had started over less.
Zamasu said nothing. He strode toward the exit, the pouch heavy at his side.
—
Lyna waited until his silhouette vanished into the street. Then she snapped her fingers at a nearby clerk with red hair. "Take over. I need to speak with the Guildmaster. 'Now'"
The clerk paled but obeyed.
She hurried through a side door, down a narrow corridor lined with oil paintings of past Guildmasters, their stern faces judging her haste.
At the end stood an oak door carved with the Guild's crest—a tower encircled by chains.
She knocked once, sharp and urgent.
"Enter."
Guildmaster Roygun was a bear of a man—broad-shouldered, with a beard streaked silver and a left eye milky from an old wound.
His office was a monument to bureaucracy: parchment piled high on every surface, maps of the Dungeon's known floors pinned to the walls, and a single narrow window casting dusty light onto his desk.
He looked up as Lyna entered. "Problem?"
"A god entered the Dungeon."
Roygun's quill snapped. "Which one?"
"He claims he's not a god. Calls himself Zamasu."
"The newly descended and newly registered one?"
"Probably…White hair, green skin, dressed like he walked out of a temple fresco." Lyna described.
'Yep, that's the one.'
"Cleared floors one through fifteen solo. Casually." She continued.
The Guildmaster's remaining eye narrowed. "Casually?"
"Bare-handed. No armor. No weapons. And he's… 'calm.'" She shuddered, recalling the way Zamasu had stood amidst the guild hall's chaos—untouched, unmoved, like a statue in a storm.
"The adventurers are already talking. If he keeps this up—"
"—the Dungeon will retaliate," Roygun finished. He stood, his chair groaning in relief. "Gods don't just 'die' quietly down there. If the Dungeon consumes one, it 'changes.' Grows stronger. Twisted."
He strode to a locked cabinet behind his desk, retrieving a scroll of indigo parchment—the kind used for divine missives. "You've done well, Lyna. Return to your post. Keep this quiet."
"And Zamasu?"
"Leave him to Ouranos."
—
Zamasu found an inn on the outskirts of the entertainment district—a cramped, three-story building named 'The Grinning Pixie.'
The sign creaked in the evening wind, its painted fairy leering at passersby with chipped eyes.
The innkeeper, a wizened elf with a whiskey-roughened voice, squinted at his valis. "You a god?"
"No."
The elf looked him up and down.
"Daily rate's 5,000 valis. No refunds"
Zamasu paid for a week.
His room was a closet with a cot, a washbasin, and a window overlooking an alley. He locked the door, placed the valis pouch beneath the thin mattress, and sat cross-legged on the floor.
'Control.'
He closed his eyes, reaching inward. The current of ki hummed in his veins—wild, untamed, a storm confined to flesh. In his mind's eye, he saw it: golden light swirling beneath his skin, pooling in his core, spilling out in wasteful bursts with every movement.
'I must refine it.'
He breathed deep, envisioning the ki as water. Slowly, painstakingly, he tried to shape it—to coil it into a concentrated stream rather than a flood.
Silence.
Zamasu sighed.
—
Roygun sealed the scroll with wax the color of midnight. The letter's contents were brief, coded, and addressed to the only being in Orario who could intervene.
'To Ouranos,'
'A god walks the Dungeon. He denies his nature, but the signs are irrefutable. Request guidance.'
He handed it to a cloaked courier—a pallum with eyes like smoked glass. "The usual drop."
The courier nodded and vanished into the night.
'I hope the chaos that befall orario is not too grand… otherwise, it might not stand this time.'
---
End of Chapter 8
Been trynna rewatch danmachi to get the chapters more detailed but it's boring asf. Also been researching each of Fused zamasu's abilities and every power level and their scaling from goku initial of 10.
Should I come up with some bullshit reason to get zamasu to learn all the turtle school techniques?